


On A Dark Night

by nookienostradamus



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Canon-compliant Weeping, Destiny, First Time, Guilt, M/M, Oral Sex, Philosophy, Pining, Poetry, Post-Finale, Reunion Fic, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:23:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookienostradamus/pseuds/nookienostradamus
Summary: Nearly a year has gone by—Tomás on the road, Marcus keeping his lonely vigil by the sea. When Tomás and Mouse return to the Pacific Northwest, a message from Marcus serves to draw Tomás toward where his former mentor and master waits. When they are reunited at last, neither man can say with certainty that God did not bring them together in the darkness of that spring night, or that they were meant to part in the first place.





	On A Dark Night

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from the English translation of the poem "En una noche oscura," written in the fifteenth century by Spanish friar and mystic San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross). The work, unfortunately, loses much of its beautiful cadence upon translation from Spanish.
> 
> I've chosen to conveniently ignore the fact that Tomás broke his vow of celibacy in Season 1 of the series, meaning he is Very Much a Virgin in this story. Marcus, at least to my mind, is not.

The text message came at eleven thirty-five, sending a diffuse blue light into the darkness of the hotel room. Tomás, who had been laying curled in bed watching the phone, now snatched it from the bedside table.

It was not a number he recognized. Still, he knew at once who it was.

_Where are you?_

He poked at the screen. Hands that were steady over the bodies of the afflicted now shook, as unsure of their grip as the pale aspen leaves that turned the banks of the Snoqualmie River into a shivering green sea. Almost a full year had passed.

_Close_ , Tomás typed. _Please i need to see you_.

After a few moments, an address appeared in the little blue speech bubble. Renton, about an hour’s drive away.

It felt as though Tomás’s heart was pressing painfully against the bounds of his rib cage, slipping between his vertebrae to prod the spinal cord, make his legs tingle and go weak. He thumbed a button and the phone’s screen went dark. In the gloom and stillness, Tomás could pick out the lines of Mouse’s sleeping face as the glow faded. She was a solid, reliable partner. A fierce believer, loyal to a Church (Tomás thought with some guilt) that would regardless never allow her to ascend to its highest levels of influence.

He should be grateful. But Mouse had told him just enough about her time with Marcus to kindle a violent jealousy within him. It was unbecoming of a toddler much less a priest, but Tomás had not yet been able to bring himself to confess to it. Instead, he held to the envy as if it were a solid object—something within him he could return to and touch on those disappointing mornings he woke to find the wrong person lying in the opposite bed.

Now, the hope and relief that surged in him could have blown the roof away and sent it tumbling. Tomás dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, shooting frequent looks over at Mouse’s unmoving form. He tucked his phone and one of the plastic key cards into his jeans. His wallet was still in the inside breast pocket of his coat. The car key he found in Mouse’s jacket, a limp shape folded over the back of the chair near the door. She took as seriously as a holy oath her promise not to let him drive.

Marcus had known—Tomás was prone to distraction. Behind the wheel... _everywhere_. Oh, if he could see it now: the direct and perfect purpose that led him. Nothing would swerve his course that night.

Tomás closed the door behind him, the air outside cool and unusually dry. Beyond the road and a grassy verge, the Snoqualmie muttered in its banks, chopping up moonlight as it went. Tomás’s face burned hot in the chill. An early moth tapped the dirty glass bowl covering the overhang light. The insect plopped to the ground in fatal disappointment when the bulb winked and went out.

In _seminario_ , the students had read San Juan de la Cruz. The Spanish saint had claimed intimate communion with the Son of God: conversations, meals, embraces.

_...sin otra luz y guía, sino la que en el corazón ardía…_

In the near-midnight darkness, Tomás, too, felt guided by a light within. He unlocked the car then put it into neutral, pushing it far enough away from the parking spot that the growl and scrape of the engine starter wouldn’t disturb Mouse. It wasn’t until he reached the traffic signal at the end of the road that he flicked on the headlights.

The mechanical voice of the phone’s GPS directed him north for a few blocks and then over the river bridge, headed west. He felt almost as if he could switch the thing off and still find his way without a single missed turn. As surely as he knew his own name, Tomás knew that God had kept him awake to find the message that night. Just like Jeremiah and the almond—in Hebrew, the name for the almond tree is “one that awakens”—he’d stood to brush white blossoms from his lap and go down into the city to preach the Word.

San Juan’s gentle Savior waited among the lilies and the reeds as the saint made his way past the monastery walls. Marcus would no doubt be in a tiny apartment in a grubby block of identical units. It might smell of damp, and of easy-to-cook foods: pasta, microwave meals. Knowing Marcus, there may not even be a bed, just a couch and a couple of blankets.

_Knowing Marcus_...the thought itself was warm. They could have agreed to meet at a dockside bar, a cannery—the very gates of Hell. But inside one embrace, the ten months (and six days) would evaporate like so much steam. All discomfort would fade; everything new would be old, and once again hang on the smell of leather and wet wool felt. A voice like the crackle of a vinyl record when the needle is set down, or a fire eating its kindling.

Tomás drove with both hands on the wheel, his knuckles ten white points against the dark sky.

Renton was a bayside burg south of Seattle proper, where the elbow of the bay bends around Mercer Island. The apartment building on 117th Place looked like a shoebox, showing gray as the water beyond Rainier Avenue seemed to absorb most of the moonlight.

Tomás’s pulse was so insistent that containing it within his skin nearly hurt. He drew deep breaths after turning off the car, sure he would stumble and fall if he stood.

Once, before he’d been appointed in Chicago, he had watched a group of young nuns enter the order. One of the novitiates had pass out on the cathedral floor before she was meant to take the vows that would bind her to Jesus for life. Medics had borne her out without disruption. Her vows remained unsaid. Tomás had seen her outside a confessional booth months later, her hair uncovered and a diamond on her finger.

_This way is not the way for everyone_.

Tomás reached up out of habit to adjust a collar that wasn’t there. It was his way; he had always known. A pious child and devoted teen, the narrow path the church offered held singular appeal. He had felt the Lord like a mantle around his shoulders each time he said Mass. When he brandished crucifix and Bible against an infestation of darkness, God’s power seemed to sing in his muscles, lending them strength and propping him up far past the point where he wanted to crumple.

A few feet from Marcus Keane’s door, something resembling that same grace was threading through Tomás’s veins. It was what had moved his limbs in the hush of the hotel room, had set his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road to the sea. It was in his blood, replacing it little by little—a feeling like learning to breathe something other than air.

His shoes, the only pair he had, tapped on the concrete underneath the covered outside staircase. No moths batted at the overhead light; the globe held only a blot of dead flies in its center like a pupil.

“Marcus,” Tomás whispered.

A door opened on the second-story landing.

His heart caught in his throat, Tomás rushed to see. Someone set a bag of trash beside the door and shut it again. The plastic slumped and began to settle with an irregular ticking sound. Tomás almost tripped on his next step when his boot scuffed against a rubber-backed doormat. The faded coir was printed with a message: Welcome Friends.

He shook his head with a rueful smile. Such a blatant invitation to anyone wasn’t Marcus’s style.

A moment later, the gap underneath the next door down filled with buttery light, spilling over a damaged aluminum threshold. The sudden flood of brightness when the door opened didn’t entirely prevent Tomás from seeing the figure that stood there.

It could be no one but Marcus. His bony feet were bare, clothing worn but not ragged. Light filtered through the pale bristle of his short-cropped hair and showed the silvery gray strands that had now almost entirely taken over. His face was a map of angular shadows, some of which Tomás saw were caused by the growth of beard on his cheeks. Even backlit, though, his expression was easy to read. It resembled the one Tomás had seen on the face of that young woman outside the confessional many years ago, the one who had given up her life as a bride of Christ.

She had yearned to be forgiven by God, to be told that her decision had not pushed her forever from the arms of Mother Church. Marcus sought no redemption from above, however. It was as clear as it had been months ago when he’d taken up Mouse’s pistol and blown a hole in Andy Kim’s head: the benediction he craved could come only from Tomás.

That knowledge should have been an unbearable weight on Tomás’s shoulders. Should have made him flinch and shudder under its implications. Instead, it broke apart and fell into dust around his feet, to be swept away by the bay wind and lost inside the night.

Tomás rushed forward, slamming the knuckles of his right hand against the door frame as he threw his arms around Marcus’s neck. The force of his body made Marcus stumble backward into the warmth of the entryway. The door swung inward hard in their wake, its knob punching a hole into plaster.

Marcus smelled like sleep and the sea.

“I missed you,” Tomás whispered into the skin above his shirt collar. “I missed you.”

Then Marcus was hugging him back. His lean arms felt a little more solid, the muscles of his upper back more defined. Whatever he had been doing, it involved manual labor.

“Yes,” Marcus said, resting his chin on Tomás’s shoulder. “I missed you, too.”

Tomás tried to hold back the tears that were brimming in his eyes, but they spilled over and ran down his cheeks.

“Come on, then,” said Marcus, taking hold of Tomás’s shoulders. “Let’s shut the door. I’ll make you a cuppa.”

Finding the canvas of his coat unyielding, Tomás slipped it off and blotted his wet face on his sweatshirt sleeve. He sniffled. “I’m sorry.”

The door clicked shut. “Don’t be sorry,” Marcus said. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, then shut it again, then shook his head. After a moment, he asked Tomás, “Can I take your coat?”

Nodding, Tomás handed it over. He looked around while Marcus hung it up over his own well-worn leather jacket, on a nail hammered into the wall beside the door. To say the apartment was small was an understatement. It was a studio layout, the tiny living area with its single armchair flowing into the bedroom space. He did, at least, have a bed—a full-sized mattress and box spring set on a bare metal frame.

Space was carved out to make the tiny kitchen by a couple of jutting cabinets topped with a slab of fake granite. It was warped, lifting a few millimeters off the wooden base. Marcus stood on pitted linoleum, filling a stovetop kettle from the tap.

Tomás studied his feet, the sprinkling of hair across the top, the slight deformation of the toes from ill-fitting shoes, the high arch.

A few clicks and a blue flame leapt to life on the two-burner stove, flooding the tiny kitchen with the sharp smell of gas. Water on the bottom of the kettle sizzled as it hit the flames. Suddenly, Tomás was terrified to have Marcus turn, to meet his eyes again.

Seeing his face in the next second, though, was like returning to a favorite passage in a beloved text. Tomás relaxed his shoulders and let go of the breath he’d been holding.

Marcus’s smile carved familiar fissures beside his mouth. He lifted one eyebrow as he often did, crumpling the skin of his forehead. Just the same as it was familiar, it was also completely new.

Tomás had often felt in the past that Marcus’s face never composed itself in quite the same way twice. A face to give a portrait painter fits of frustration. Marcus, of course, would find the notion of sitting for a painting ludicrous. It was hard to imagine him done up in furs, sitting next to a gold urn or a plate of fruit, but Tomás smiled at the idea.

“What’re you smiling about?” Marcus asked him.

“It’s nice…” Tomás swallowed with effort, a lump rising in his throat. “Nice to be happy.” He looked away for a moment, down toward the floor, then added, “Again.”

Marcus only nodded. After a few seconds, he said, “Would you like to have a seat?”

Tomás had pinched some of the the stiff fabric of his jeans and was rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think that I can.”

Something unreadable flitted across Marcus’s face. “Not planning on staying too long.” It wasn’t a question.

Propelled by whatever was reaching into his bloodstream, Tomás stepped forward, the toes of his shoes at the edge of the kitchen linoleum. “That’s not it.”

A lopsided smile from Marcus. It was mirthless and drained. “Tomás. There’s not enough time tonight to say all the things we’d like to. Maybe not even if we had all the nights in the world.”

“We don’t have to say anything,” Tomás told him. “It’s all in the past. All gone.”

Marcus shook his head. “Mouse will know where you are. Not exactly, but she’ll know.”

His voice getting thick and tear-filled again, Tomás said, “Yes.” He paused. “Where else in the world would I go?”

“Toward your future. Your destiny,” Marcus said, his brows drawing inward. “The path that God has chosen for you. That’s not here.” He raised a hand and gestured toward the door. “It’s out there.”

Tomás noticed the hand was trembling. “Then why do I feel Him stronger here than anywhere? When I give the rites, when I pray, I feel God’s power moving through me. But it hasn’t been this strong for almost a year, Marcus. Now...it’s like it isn’t just inside me. It _is_ me.”

Marcus frowned. His eyes were bright, his gaze moving in leaps over Tomás’s face, unable to focus on one spot. “Perhaps it isn’t God you’re feeling.”

The words hit Tomás in the chest like a hammer blow. “That’s not possible. I would know if I was compromised. I would _know_. You taught me.”

Marcus’s warm and callused hand touched his cheek. “I don’t mean a demon, Tomás. You’re far stronger than that.”

Tomás leaned into the touch, a nameless burning in his chest and throat.

Marcus put his other hand on his shoulder. “Which is why you have to be strong enough to walk out that door again. Return to Mouse...and your true calling.”

Inwardly, Tomás cursed himself when a tear fell and broke against the edge of Marcus’s palm. “I know what I feel. For the first time, there’s no doubt. It started with your message tonight and it only got stronger. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”

“Sure of what? That you’ll convince me to come back with you? That I can keep preaching and living God’s word with a mortal sin on my soul?” He shook his head but he didn’t move away. “I’m past saving. But you’re not.”

Tomás clenched his hands into fists at his sides. “I don’t want to save you. Or convince you. I just want to…”

A slim half-moon of unshed tears swam above Marcus’s lower lashes. “Tell me.”

Tomás raised his hand and used it to press Marcus’s palm against his face, closing his eyes. “To _be_ with you. I’m not...the man I know I can be. Without you.”

Marcus sniffed, looking away, past Tomás’s shoulder into the darkened room beyond. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

Frustration surging within him, Tomás said, “I do. There’s something missing. With Mouse. The only place I can find it—” he pressed his hand against the thin, nubby fabric of Marcus’s shirt, fingers tapping the bars of his ribs— “is _here._ ”

“I should never have contacted you,” Marcus told him. Still, he grasped Tomás’s hand and raised it to his mouth, kissed the center of his palm.

A wave of heat rushed up Tomás’s arm from the place where Marcus’s lips had touched his skin, breaking across his chest and fanning out like a blush. It seemed to seep into his skin and then through it, trickling into his chest. The light inside him responded, reached out and lapped up the sensation, fueling itself.

_Transmogrifying, holy._

Tomás’s face burned as if he had failed to shield his eyes before God. His legs went weak.

Marcus saw him sway and moved to bear him up, ever the solid rock. But this time, he also seemed to bend as Tomás clutched at him. They connected at hip and thigh, evading a fall for the moment. Tomás’s hand was on Marcus’s scruffy cheek; Marcus splayed his fingers along Tomás’s side, his fingertips digging at the sweatshirt.

Warm breath billowed over Tomás’s mouth. He followed its source, nearer, nearer...until lips were pressed against his own—slightly chapped from the sea air but still yielding. He had never kissed anyone on the mouth before. Years of sweaty brows and the soft, powder-scented crowns of babies’ heads: _nothing, nothing compared to this_.

Marcus made a small noise and tilted his chin slightly, parting his lips just enough that Tomás could feel the wetness inside his mouth. He slipped his tongue out unprompted and licked across the seam of those lips. The speed with which Marcus opened to him was startling—his grip firm on Tomás’s chin as he deepened the kiss. Tomás was sure his inexperience showed, but concern faded and slipped away almost at once. The substance—the _grace_ —that suffused his body stood at high tide. It was greedy, expanding. Before Marcus pulled away, Tomás began to grow frightened it might overwhelm him, render him senseless.

A slight tightening of fingers around his throat made Tomás open his eyes. It was hard to focus on Marcus’s face through the fog in his mind.

“No, Tomás.”

His vision snapped into sudden clarity and he clutched strong at Marcus’s shoulders, making him wince. “Don’t tell me ‘no.’ Look at me. Look at me and say you don’t feel it. That you don’t want it.”

Marcus tried for a dismissive sneer. “Of course I can’t say that.” His face softened as he stroked Tomás’s brow. “Listen to me, Tomás. This will ruin you. _I_ will ruin you. Everything you’ve worked for all your life will come tumbling down around your ears. God will—”

“God will understand,” Tomás cut in. “It was Him who brought me to you. In Chicago, and tonight. If it feels like this, I don’t understand how it can be anything but His plan for me. For us.”

“It’s _sin_ ,” Marcus hissed. It was clear he was struggling to put urgency behind the words and failing. “The enemy will use it against you.”

Tomás brushed his thumb over Marcus’s lips. “It already has. And I fought it back, Marcus. It’s not my vows that make me strong. It’s _you_.”

Marcus squeezed his eyes shut.

Tomás watched in shock as a tear slid from the corner of one eye and into the deep crease beside his mouth.

“It can’t last,” Marcus said, his voice thick and choked. “Someday I _will_ leave you again.”

Tomás bent forward to kiss his lips again. “Then be with me here,” he said. “Now.”

For an agonizing moment, Marcus studied his face.

That frank gaze, applied in its full and icy strength, had always made Tomás want to shy away. He stood firm this time, open to scrutiny.

At long last, Marcus sagged in his grip and brought their faces close together, brushing Tomás’s nose with his own and then kissing the tip. “I’ve wanted you for so long. _So_ long.” There was both relief and defeat in his tone. “You don’t know.”

Anticipation welled up inside Tomás and pushed at his lungs. “I do. I know.”

That prompted a half-smile from Marcus.

Tomás echoed it, then whispered against his mouth: “But tell me anyway. I need to hear your voice.”

Another kiss: sweet, long, and slow. Tomás was salivating; many times, whether in passing during the day or in detail at night as he had lain awake in their shared motel rooms, he had imagined this kiss. The taste of Marcus’s mouth was strange—something and nothing at the same time, like minerals dissolved in water.

On the stovetop, the forgotten kettle began to howl. Marcus fumbled with the switch until the flames shrank and guttered. The whistling became a resigned sigh.

Tomás felt hesitant fingers under the hem of his sweatshirt. They were clammy; Marcus’s hands had always been cool and dry. It excited Tomás to think he might have provoked it, that he could send another’s blood rushing and churning just as his own was.

“I don’t know what you want,” Marcus said, leaning in to press kisses along Tomás’s jaw line.

Cupping the back of his head, possessive, Tomás asked, “What do _you_ want?”

“Whatever you’ll give me.”

The low rumble directly in Tomás’s ear made the breath catch in his throat. “I don’t know how to do...anything,” he admitted. “I just want you to—”

Marcus stopped kissing his neck and looked into his eyes again. There was something like awe in his gaze. More than that, his face was bare of any concealment or pretense. The cautious, skeptical Marcus was gone and it stripped away decades, making Tomás fully believe he was looking at a younger man.

“Whatever you do is what I want,” Marcus whispered. “Love,” he said, then stopped, searching for a way to continue.

Tomás heard the endearment, took it in, shaped and examined it in his mind. Outside of the burning in his blood, now far beyond the place where it could frighten him, he thought: _Love. Is that what this is?_

Its sound and shape in his head were unlike other words in any language he knew. He surrendered and let the hungry light take it.

“I…” Marcus scrubbed at the corner of his eye with the heel of his hand, then reached up to smooth a stubborn curl away from Tomás’s forehead. “I was ready to make a new life...and I was prepared to spend it waiting all over again. Knowing you were out there, somewhere, would have been enough.”

“Not for me,” said Tomás. He hooked his fingers under the hem of his sweatshirt, pulled it up over his head, and tossed it away. He hoped Marcus could feel the hammering of his pulse as he placed his hands on his chest. One work-roughened thumb slid over his nipple and Tomás shuddered. Places on his own skin he had touched casually all his life erupted in gooseflesh, the muscles below it quivering.

Marcus, his lips slightly parted, skimmed fingertips over Tomás’s biceps and traced tickling paths along his flanks, tentative.

Tomás reached out to fumble at the hem of Marcus’s t-shirt. “Please,” he whispered.

Ducking his chin, Marcus said, “I’m not much to look at.”

The shame in his voice tugged hard at something inside Tomás. “You’re the only thing I want to see.”

A familiar and comforting hand on Tomás’s neck. Marcus studied his features as if seeing them clearly for the first time. “Dear boy. Wherever did you come from?” He smiled and then shrugged his shirt off. His torso was lean, with a little hair scattered over the breastbone. Ribs rose into view with each heavy breath; he could have been an ascetic perched on a clifftop, scrawling holy revelations on parchment. The Father Marcus Keane that Tomás had first met had seemed unreachable, but here he was alive and warm and _present_. The first press of skin against naked skin as they drew together was enough to make Tomás dizzy.

Marcus whispered his name into damp flesh, then mouthed at the skin of his throat. When he skimmed sharp teeth over the join of shoulder and neck, Tomás gave an involuntary gasp and clutched tight at Marcus’s sides.

His cock twitched against the fly of his jeans; his whole body had been so consumed with sensation that he hadn’t noticed he was growing hard. Without thinking, Tomás let his hips cant forward. At once, a firm hand was on his ass, pulling him closer. Even through the thick denim, Tomás could feel the stiffness lying against his thigh. Discovering that their kisses and touches aroused Marcus, too, brought a thin and helpless sound from his throat. He gave in to the instinct to move his leg, to rub against the hardness he found. Short-trimmed nails bit into the meat of his back, making him squirm and arch away from the unexpected pleasure-pain. His cock throbbed, heavy, a vulgar echo of his galloping heart.

Gripping Tomás’s chin with firm fingers, Marcus kissed him again, surprising him by drawing his bottom lip between his teeth and sucking it gently.

Tomás let out a pleading whimper and was released. He re-centered himself, trying to quiet his mind, his hands on Marcus’s firm biceps. Lips reddened and trembling, he looked down into the space between their bodies at the erection that stretched the thin fabric of Marcus’s pants. It was exhilarating to at last see the response of his own body mirrored so perfectly in another.

Tomás had been ashamed of the few times he had felt compelled to touch himself—when  even anxious prayer wouldn’t scrub out the ache. He had needed it so much more often since he’d met Marcus and their paths had merged, and had told himself for much of that time that his own weakness in the face of the enemy was to blame. The first time: humiliated and confused but achingly hard after seeing Marcus deface his Bible. The branches sketched in pen split and coiled through the scripture, yet somehow bound the words closer to their meaning—an arterial reaching into every separate organ to create a living body.

It had been little wonder the demon inside Casey Rance had used Marcus against him. But he realized now that great failing still could be trained into strength, as with Samson and the temple of the Philistines.

Marcus had guided him like the grapevine around the rod—tender in its beginnings but then rooting the iron to the ground with shocking tenacity.

Now, here, with his feelings for Marcus given name and agency, shame lost its grip and vanished. Meeting Marcus’s eyes, Tomás slowly lowered himself down until his knees thumped against the linoleum. The concrete below it had no give; he might just as well have been kneeling on the marble floor of a cathedral.

Marcus let out a long breath, and it tumbled over Tomás’s upturned face.

“Show me how,” he said. The warm hand placed on the top of his head would have been parodic and obscene if it weren’t so tender. Still sensing hesitation, he raised a hand and wrapped his fingers around Marcus’s cock. Only thin, damp fabric separated skin from skin.

With a nod, Marcus tugged at his waistband.

Tomás pulled, too. The worn fabric fell around Marcus’s ankles. A heavy scent rose into the still air—the same smell Tomás had occasionally caught filtering up from underneath Marcus’s shirt, but much fuller and richer. Saliva flooded his mouth. He clutched reflexively at his own erection as fierce arousal surged in his gut.

Marcus’s skin was very pale, protected by the heavy Pacific cloud cover. It made a striking contrast with the ashy-dark hair between his legs and the vivid pinkness of his cock—all of it an unknown landscape made lovely by desire. His skin was soft and fever-warm as Tomás grasped it again and leaned forward to take it in his mouth. Scent and taste converged, sharp and strong as ocean water.

“Oh, God…” Marcus said, the mild blasphemy sweet on his lips.

Tomás took it as encouragement and let the thick weight slide along his tongue, gently prod the back of his throat. He found he had to move very little; Marcus pushed his hips in small, helpless pulses, breathing soft and fast.

Entranced, Tomás let his hands slide up Marcus’s thighs. Fingers scraped over his scalp when he made a low noise in his throat. He placed his palm against Marcus’s belly, encircling the thick base of his cock with his thumb and forefinger. When he moved backwards a little to suck at the sensitive head, Marcus gasped and pulled away entirely.

Tomás looked up at his flushed and creased face, a stab of concern splitting the hazy pleasure. “Did I do something wrong?”

Marcus stroked his cheek and thumbed his wet and swollen lip. “No, darling. Nothing wrong. It’s just...been a long time. I’d rather last a little longer.” He took Tomás’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “Come to bed.”

Though it was a gentle command, Tomás had never needed so desperately to obey. He followed into the hushed shadows, Marcus’s fingers clutched in his and his pale form drawing all light, an apparition.

At the side of the small bed, Marcus crouched to unlace Tomás’s shoes, his eyes averted like the Magdalene. The fathers of the early Church—long before the Nicæan Council and the golden pomp of the Middle Ages—had insisted that new converts be baptised completely unclothed so no fabric or adornment would stand between them the Holy Spirit. As Marcus pulled away his jeans and slid his briefs carefully over his rigid cock, Tomás thrummed with the same awestruck urgency he had felt as he took his holy orders, knowing himself to be on the cusp of deepest communion with the divine.

He nearly shouted into the silent room when he felt a firm grip encircle him. Marcus stood at his side, kissing along the curve of his shoulder, his other hand in the small of his back as he began to stroke. An aching and insistent heat coiled in his belly.

_Too soon_.

“Marcus,” Tomás managed, his fingers grasping at thin air, “I can’t—it’s too much.”

“You’re all right, love,” came the reverent whisper by his ear. “Let it go. Let it go.”

Tomás closed his eyes. Pleasure rushed through him, the light inside sizzling and spilling over just as he did.

Marcus stroked him through it, coaxing more from him until nearly all Tomás’s strength was leached away, then gathered the last droplets of his release and brought them to his mouth. Tomás had to fight to remain standing as he watched Marcus lick his hand clean. When a dampened finger touched his mouth, Tomás closed his lips over it, tasting the salt of sweat and his own seed.

“You’re so beautiful,” Marcus told him, moving to clutch at his neck and press their foreheads together as he had done so often in the past. “I could barely let myself imagine.” He kissed his temple gently. “My Tomás…”

Willing his mind to supply words, Tomás nodded, fervent. “Yes,” he said. “I’m yours. I belong to you.”

After drawing Tomás’s hand away and kissing the knuckles, Marcus sat on the edge of the low bed and pulled Tomás down to straddle his lap. They leaned into one another, exchanging warmth in the cool room, the stiff and prodding length of Marcus’s untended cock trapped between them.

“Touch me,” Tomás said. “I need to feel you.”

Marcus again said nothing—only smiled and brought him in for a kiss. But he set his hands roving over Tomás’s skin: caressing his sides, stroking his back, skimming his shoulder blades and so lightly through the hair under his arms that he squirmed. Then, with fingers in his thick hair, he hauled Tomás’s head to the side with unexpected force and sucked fiercely at the delicate skin of his neck, drawing it between his teeth until the nerves sang.

When Tomás was younger, yet to join the _seminario_ , he remembered his sister coming home after a night at the movies or at the park, tugging up her collar and smudging honey-colored makeup on the little bruises scattered over her throat. Tomás, a prude but far from oblivious, had shaken his head. Now, the idea of running his fingers over purple welts—having them chafe against his clerical collar and knowing it had been Marcus who had put them there—bloomed heavy and sensuous in his mind.

_Marcus. The only thing he had ever coveted. Here in his arms, warm and receptive and_ real.

Tomás felt a hand slide over his hip then gently cup one buttock before a finger slid into his cleft. He gasped and writhed.

Warm lips moved against his flesh. “No?”

“Yes,” he said, an immediate entreaty. “There.” Again, there should have been self-reproof: the purity he had promised to the church sullied in the embrace of another man— _a former priest_ , at that. But when Tomás tried to conjure guilt, he failed. He knew he was fallen as a holy man, yet at the same time caught in Marcus’s arms and lifted up before the darkness could even think to reach for him.

A finger touched his lips again and he gladly took it in his mouth, rolling his tongue around it, tasting the thick musk of sex. When it was withdrawn, a shimmering strand of saliva stretched and then broke, trailing cool in the scruff on his chin.

With one palm at the join of buttock and thigh, Marcus prompted Tomás to rise up a little on his knees, then slipped a hand between his legs.

A bare second after the rough palm cradled his testicles, Tomás felt the slide of a wetted fingertip over a spot he had only ever touched in passing. His body lit up, nerves aflame, base desire running counter to everything he’d ever professed to uphold. The shorn hair at his nape stood on end. Heat rushed through his belly at the touch and made his limp cock stir again, dragging a slick trail of fluid across Marcus’s chest.

Tomás let his mouth fall open and his head tip backward when Marcus slipped a fingertip inside his body. He dug into the meat of Marcus’s shoulder, trying to process the sensation as the finger slid inside to the second knuckle.

“You’re fine, darling,” Marcus whispered against his belly. “You’re doing so well.”

Just a little further in, the sense of strangeness keen. Tomás struggled to breathe into it, to accept the invasion. He searched Marcus’s face for reassurance.

Marcus leaned back as far as his reach allowed. “Touch yourself,” he said. “It’ll help you start to feel good.”

Tomás moved at once to obey the soft command. One hand still using Marcus’s shoulder for support, he wrapped tentative fingers around his own cock. After a moment, he began to stroke, long and languid, trying to mimic Marcus’s touch.

Prior to that night, he had tried to get it over with as quickly as possible, fielding disgust alongside his helpless need. But now he only wanted to please; he would do whatever Marcus desired, would come as many times as he was asked, until he was spent and aching...and beyond that if only Marcus commanded it.

For his own part, Marcus was rapt—his strained erection laying against Tomás’s thigh, his tongue slipping out to wet his lower lip. “Beautiful,” he repeated.

Goaded by the approval, Tomás tightened his grip and let his spine soften and bend, his taut thighs relax. The finger slid fully within him, the press of knuckles sharp against the swell of his ass.

Marcus sighed and curled it slightly.

His fingertip brushed something that sent sparks up Tomás’s spine. He bit back a groan and moved his hand a little faster.

“Don’t stop, darling,” Marcus said, the shallow motion of his finger too tempting.

Sweat prickled at Tomás’s hairline, over his breastbone. “Will you—?” he panted, the words dissipating as intense pleasure gripped him.

“Soon. But I want you to come again first.”

“Please,” Tomás said, reaching behind him to stroke Marcus’s wrist. “A little faster.” All sense of foreignness had fled, giving over to unrelenting want, ravenous and eager. His hand slowed on his cock, letting a stream of fluid leak over his knuckles. He could only concentrate on the dawning intensity, the feeling of fullness where he and Marcus were joined. It was sweet...and not nearly enough.

“I want to—” Tomás started, immersed in the act but still struggling to speak the words. “Want you...inside me,” he said at last, cheeks tingling and eyes downcast. When he looked up again, he saw indecision flicker across Marcus’s face as he negotiated his own need. Tomás understood in that moment that there had never been a time when Marcus hadn’t weighed the extremity of the situation against what he knew Tomás could handle. That formidable mind, infinitely more complex and cryptic than any scripture or rite. Always moving, always testing, never asleep. The nagging inadequacy that Tomás had often felt while around his mentor had been translated now to wonder, humility, the solemn weight of being _chosen_.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” said Marcus. “It can hurt.” He added, “If you’re not ready.” The immediate shake of his head and twist of his mouth showed he regretted the addition.

Tomás almost had to smile. Marcus also knew him to be stubborn, even demanding. For now, he only offered a plea, hoping it would be enough. “If there’s nothing beyond tonight,” he said, “I don’t think I can’t wait another lifetime.” He paused a moment. “¡ _Oh noche amable más que la alborada!_ ”*

Marcus brushed his thumb gently along the ridge of Tomás’s cheekbone. “I don’t know what that means.”

“You don’t have to.”

All of the lines of Marcus’s face, each one well earned, fell softly into a show of perfect affection. The pre-dawn blackness did nothing to dampen the shine of his eyes—engaged, almost predatory now, as both of them stepped along the uneven edge of arousal. “Stay here a moment,” he said.

Tomás moved away, unable to help a soft gasp as the finger slipped free, leaving him wanting.

Marcus was out of view for only a few seconds, then returned balancing a palmful of subtly shining liquid. Sitting again on the side of the bed, he winced as he smoothed the slickness over his cock.

Even the brief expression of need on his face made Tomás yearn to touch him again, relieve him, bring him to the climax he had so far put off. Tomás slung his leg again over Marcus’s thighs, cupped his face and kissed him. Slippery coolness brushed over his skin; he immediately reached behind again to guide the warm and rigid cock to its mark.

“Slowly, now,” Marcus whispered, a hitch in his voice. “Take as long as you need. I’m here.”

Tomás’s head felt buoyant, his limbs light—as if without the warm and confining arms around him he might rise. Sudden pressure grounded him; he breathed deeply once and then made himself descend. A mild pinching turned acute after a second or two, then to a burning that radiated through the cradle of his hips as he was breached. He concentrated on Marcus’s expression, which wavered between concern and abandon, and pushed steadily into the impossible fullness with a white-hot star in his belly. When his trembling thighs finally touched skin, Marcus let out a shuddering breath and Tomás captured it with his mouth, groaning with anticipated pleasure as Marcus slid to the hilt inside him.

“Is it good?” he asked, thin and breathless.

Marcus only buried his face in Tomás’s neck and sighed, dragging his lips through the sheen of perspiration pooling above his collar bone.

He made a soft and high noise in his throat when Tomás shifted his hips. Though it seemed he wanted to pull him close, instead he reached with his still-slick hand between them and took Tomás’s cock in a firm grip.

There, again, the sweet urgency flared up; with arms around Marcus’s waist he pushed against him, rose, and then sank down again. At the same time, Marcus drew him closer to the edge. Tomás’s craving for touch was as fierce and constant as the way he spoke Marcus’s name, over and over. After a while, the words fell away again and he groaned, eyelids fluttering.

Knotting the fingers of his free hand into sweat-dampened curls, Marcus said, “Yes, my darling,” and kissed the trembling corner of his mouth. “Come for me.”

The command, no less imperative for its gentleness, made Tomás’s eyes shut tight. His orgasm surged up his spine and made his jaw hang slack. He tried and failed to bite back a cry, spilling hot over Marcus’s chest and belly, all his muscles clenching in helpless release. A warm hand cradled his sweat-damp neck. When he was able to open his eyes, the palpable waves of bone-deep pleasure receding, Marcus looked _hungry_.

Tomás had seen something like it before, in those times when his mentor’s keen sights were set on a hidden truth, but never before directed at him. He felt more thoroughly naked than he ever had, even kneeling at the altar, his soul exposed in the sight of God. The desire he saw in Marcus leached beyond the boundary of his skin, settling into his lax muscles and pushing back outward. He was filled entirely—his body, his senses, his complete attention.

Tomás followed, willing, as he was brought down to lie on his back on the mattress. Marcus settled over him, his weight a reassurance, a shield. Tomás bared his throat and gave up a sigh to the air over the bed with the first deep thrust. Marcus’s narrow hips pried his thighs apart, the sharp hip bones digging into his flesh. Cool wetness was pressed between their warm bodies. Knowing that Marcus would soon find his own release inside him inflamed Tomás’s mind and scrubbed it of all reason.

“ _Oh, God…_ ” Marcus hissed in his ear. More a prayer this time, though to no power Tomás recognized. The knots of Marcus’s muscles moved as steady as the ocean a few streets away, as it grasped with its cool fingers at the metal docks. Tomás grasped, as well, and raised his hips. The smooth slide within his body was hypnotic, sustaining his peak long past the point that it should have melted away.

A warm teardrop fell and shivered on his chest.

“So sweet,” came the broken whisper. “So _fucking_ good.”

“Marcus,” said Tomás, kissing the tear’s track across his face. “ _Mi amor. Mi alma._ ”

Marcus slid the rough pad of his thumb over Tomás’s lips as he had done so many times that night, acknowledging his words with unspoken awe. “I’m close,” he said.

“Yes,” Tomás told him, seeing him suddenly fragile as he gave in. “I want it.”

A low groan echoing in his chest, Marcus shuddered and emptied himself in long and erratic pulses.

Tomás felt the warmth blossoming within him and he clung tight to the quivering body in his embrace until Marcus stilled and went slack. They stayed as they were for a long time, Marcus going soft inside him and then slipping free, leaving Tomás with a curious feeling of bereavement. After a little while, he guided them both to one side, their limbs still intertwined. Tomás could happily stay there until his skin prickled with cold and his arm and leg went numb under the weight of his lover’s body.

_Marcus_. _Lover_.

The two words had taken far too long to be joined. If only he could have connected them like Marcus had the trapped passages in his holy book. Marcus, the man who had invaded his home unasked, then taken over his path—his _life_ —so utterly that it was impossible to imagine a part of it left untouched.

Then he _had_ experienced life without him, had moved through it like a living ghost, bled out but walking.

_Never again_.

A while later, they held one another inside the warm and metallic-smelling spray of the shower. Tomás cupped his palm to pour water over Marcus’s head and traced circles on the skin of his belly as the flow took away the last slippery remnants of his seed.

The coming dawn was still only a gray bar against the far horizon as Tomás sat on the bed. He tried to pull the scratchy blanket around Marcus, who lay between his legs, his head resting on Tomás’s shoulder. He was silent and warm in his sleep, his trust enshrined in the man who held him.

As Tomás watched, a blue rectangle lit up in the pocket of his discarded jeans. It went black, then lit up again. Mouse had obviously woken to find him gone, but he felt no urgency now. He stroked the skin behind Marcus’s ear and rested his head against the wall behind them.

Although he closed his eyes, he would not sleep again that night, only look out the window until the shade of the sky matched the ocean and bend his head at times to breathe the scent of clean skin.

Let the earth move on a little, Tomás thought. Let the restless thing in his arms that held his heart find stillness for awhile.

**Author's Note:**

> *¡Oh noche amable más que la alborada! - "Oh night more lovely than the dawn!"
> 
> Once again, my wondrous beta, who is [twobrokenwyngs](http://twobrokenwyngs.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, has prevented me from embarrassing myself with missing words, silly prose, and unclear scenarios (not to mention vaguely described sex positions). 
> 
> For those interested, Celtic/world musician Loreena McKennitt recorded a song based loosely on the English translation of the title poem. I won't link here in case of any copyright weirdness, but I do recommend that you look up "The Dark Night of the Soul" (from the album "The Mask and Mirror," 1994). It's got this ship written all over it.
> 
> Feel free to tell me your headcanons, drop a line, suggest a fic, or do whatever your shippy little heart desires on [Tumblr](http://nookienostradamus.tumblr.com/).


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